Badass: Making Users Awesome

31

The Challenge

Prologue



What happens if we don’t make snowboards, video editing

software, or anything else that someone can become badass at?

Imagine a tiny little utility tool “X.”

What does having X enable?

What can people now do because of X that they couldn’t do

without it?

What can people now do better because of X?

What are people not doing now but could if they took advantage

of all that X supports?

That’s just a warm-up. The exercise on the next set of pages

will ask you to dene something linked to your product, service,

or cause that users can become badass at. Regardless of how

unlikely it may seem, anything can be linked to the potential for

badass results. The key lies in answering this:

“What are you a subset of?”

Even if you already know what badass means for your product

or service, don’t skip this quick exercise. We’ll refer to pieces of

it throughout the rest of the book, and it might give you more

ideas for new things your users can become badass at.

Badass at… what?

32

The Challenge

Prologue



(Answering “Badass at what?”)

The Superset Exercise

Imagine this is you...

...and this is your competitor

Or maybe your relative sizes are reversed:

But how big you are relative to your competition is

not what matters here.

your competitor

you

What matters most is asking

one crucial question…

33

The Challenge

Prologue



you

competitor

Your thing is a subset of some bigger, more compelling thing.

What’s the context in which your product or service is used?

What are you both a subset of?

bigger, better, context

THIS is the motivation…

...for THESE

34

The Challenge

Prologue



Adobe Premiere

Final Cut Pro X

What are you a subset of?

(You could have many different answers,

depending on how far you expand the context.)

What’s your bigger compelling context?

Making fabulous

videos

Canon Cinema camera

Manfrotto tripod

RODE

microphone

Example

Video editing software, cameras, lighting, and microphones

are all subsets of video creation.

bigger, compelling context

35

The Challenge

Prologue



What I really want to do is be

THE best tripod expert.

Nobody says this.